The Greater Compliment
by BlackEyedGirl
Summary: Post movie, Tony deals with the aftermath of an unpleasant task by getting drunk. Rhodey helps. Talking and semi-angsty nakedness ensue. Tony/Rhodes slash. Click through to the more spoilery summary.


**Title:** The Greater Compliment  
**Fandom:** Iron Man (movieverse)  
**Pairing:** Tony Stark/James Rhodes  
**Rating:** PG-13  
**Length:** 1,350  
**Disclaimer:** All belongs to Marvel Studios, Marvel Comics, and other folks not me.  
**Spoilers:** For the entirety of the movie. Don't read if you haven't seen it.  
**Summary:** _Tony asks, "How the hell did you get in here?" and there's a touch of belligerence in the midst of all that slurring. "Everyone just walks right in."_ Post movie, Tony deals with the aftermath of an unpleasant task by getting drunk. Rhodey helps. Talking and semi-angsty nakedness ensue.

**AN:** So, the scene with Stane and Tony and temporary paralysis really creeped me out. And then they have to fake his death and pretend to have a real funeral. Mental-Tony did not respond well to all this.

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_'To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved.'  
- _George MacDonald

9&9&9

Tony is drunk. Not in his usual 'my blood is swimming in alcohol' kind of way, but in the way that means he's looking up at Jim through hazy eyes.

Tony asks, "How the hell did you get in here?" and there's a touch of belligerence in the midst of all that slurring. "Everyone just walks right in."

"No one just walks in," Jim says. "Your goddamn housekeeping staff gets military vetting."

Jim walks past Tony and picks up a glass from the table. There are two – one for him, and one for Tony – which just goes to show that Tony had at some point remembered inviting him. He pours himself a glass of scotch.

Tony is sitting on the floor, his back against one of the couches. He's still wearing the suit – all dressed up in faux mourning – but there's grease running up to his elbows. A trail of mechanical disaster leads up from the lab to the coffee table, ending at the joint piece Tony is currently manipulating with a screwdriver. "This one's yours," he says.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I'm thinking I might bring back-up next time. I'm not really the solo hero type."

Jim grins, and bumps Tony's shoulder. "You do okay." Tony frowns, and moves away with his toy.

Jim takes a long drink, and then another. Eventually he asks, "Should you be doing that drunk?"

"That, what?"

"That, screwing around with the inside of my flying machine, what."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"It's fine."

"Okay, but when I start tumbling down from fifty thousand feet over the Pacific-"

"I'll catch you."

Tony's weirdly sincere, and it's enough to make Jim pause. Tony's affectionate all of the damn time, but it's mostly expressed through casual touching and too-expensive gifts. Plus the good old-fashioned innuendo. Jim's not quite sure how to respond to Tony like this – maudlin and earnest all mixed. He knew he should have come straight back with him after the funeral. At the very least he should have refused to let Tony send Pepper home. (To see her parents – who kept catching glimpses of her in the background of news reports detailing explosions and terrorist threats).

With the hand not occupied with tool-wrangling, Tony reaches blindly for the television remote. Jim passes it to him. "Movie?" Jim asks. "Something with girls and guns and not much else?"

Tony powers on the giant flat-screen. _'-funeral of businessman and weapons designer, Obadiah Stane, killed in a tragic air crash. His small plane went down-'_

Jim wrestles with Tony for the remote.

'_-so soon after his business partner and protégé Tony Stark was rescued from Afghanistan-'_

He has the upper hand, but Tony's head is way too close to the edge of the table. Jim's always let down by this when he fights with Tony: he cares too much to let him get really hurt.

_'-Tony Stark, now of course revealed to be 'Iron Man', still too emotional to give a eulogy-'_

Jim gets the remote, and turns the television off with an angry stab of his finger. Tony is slipping sideways, and Jim pushes him upright with a hand to his chest.

Tony freezes. He stays absolutely stock still underneath Jim's hand. His eyes are huge and dark. Jim's not sure about Tony's heartbeat anymore but his chest is juddering like it's pounding. Jim pulls his hand away sharply, rocking back onto his knees. "Tony?"

"Yeah."

"You're kind of… you need me to call someone?"

"No. You wanna hear something funny?"

"Funny ha-ha or funny weird?"

"Little of both." Tony smiles, all teeth. "He just walked in."

"Who did?"

"Obie. I gave him the keys to the kingdom and he just walked in. Even after I knew he was the one trying to get me committed, I didn't tell JARVIS not to let him into the house."

Tony stretches a hand up to rest under Jim's ear. He makes a little buzzing noise, and Jim knows the reference.

"Full-body paralysis," Tony says. "because I never would have thought to lock Obadiah Stane out. Anybody else but not him. You and Pepper and him."

"I know, Tony, I know-" Jim talks back but doesn't move. He lets Tony push him back against the foot of the couch, back into a sitting position, with Tony braced over his legs.

Tony splays his hand – warm and dry – over Jim's heart. He unbuttons the military dress shirt and replaces his hand against the skin. Jim can feel his own heartbeat reflected back through Tony's palm.

Tony's talking again. "He opened my shirt and he touched my chest. He leant in close, so he could whisper right in my ear."

Jim's hissing through his teeth, a low ssh-ssh-ssh that isn't making anything better.

"I'm not good at being helpless," Tony says. There are plenty of people that would disagree with that assessment, Jim knows, but it's accurate in its way. Tony's created a business empire whose nucleus is commanded by him, JARVIS, and a host of semi-sentient robotic arms. Pepper's the only human cog in the vast machine that keeps Tony running. She needs him right back of course, but Jim's the only one who really saw her those three months, who knows just how deep that connection goes.

Pepper would be better at this – if it was Pepper's shirt unbuttoned, this would be a different type of conversation. Jim can't deflect with such ease, and can't slap Tony and expect to be forgiven in the morning. He doesn't want to do either.

So he sits, quite still, while Tony slides Jim's shirt down his arms, and goes back to measuring out his heartbeat.

Tony leans in, so his shirt buttons press against Jim's skin. His stubble rubs at Jim's neck. "And then he pulled out my heart."

Jim doesn't know the right words for '_I would never'_. He wonders if Pepper got this kind of security check; he knows that she didn't. He doesn't know how to say, 'I'm sorry your life got this kind of screwed up, and I'm sorrier if you feel I think you deserve it, and I'd fix it if I could.'

The edges of the casing for the arc reactor press red marks onto Jim's chest through Tony's shirt. Tony pulls back and looks at them with a confused expression. Jim's seen it before, the one just after Tony launches a new weapon, the one that means 'did I do that?' Tony doesn't look so drunk anymore.

Tony looks back up at Jim's face and says, "He kind of scared me. Not afterwards, so much, with the weaponised suit and the crashing around. But before, ya know? I thought he'd killed Pepper."

There's a question buried in there, and it gives Jim tacit permission to speak again. He still doesn't know the words. He says, "I know." He says, "JARVIS, dim the lights."

That's a question too, and Tony laughs, and nods against Jim's shoulder, and wriggles until they're both horizontal. Both hard, as well, after another moment or two.

They've been on the edge of this for weeks (since Jim saw Tony cut through the air like the most beautiful plane he's never seen). For months, maybe (since Afghanistan, since Jim failed to keep Tony safe, since Tony fell against him, burned and bruised but still alive). It might even be longer than that (since every time Tony ever smiled and dipped a glass his direction, since dislike burned into wary awe at the genius living under all that other crap, since Tony became the best friend he didn't know he wanted). Jim's seen Tony naked before, and there's been some more than incidental touching, in the course of drunkenness, and semi-threesomes. But this is new. Tony's never acted like it mattered before.

Jim reaches for the fly of Tony's pants, and lets Tony unburden him of his own. He slides Tony's dress shirt off, and watches while Tony wrestles with the decision about his undershirt.

The blue glow is evident even through the cotton. Tony blinks at him. "Rhodey-"

Jim smiles at him. "It's okay, Tony." He hisses through his teeth when Tony grins back and moves his hand lower. _Ssh-ssh-ssh. _

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FIN. Feedback, as ever, is much appreciated.


End file.
